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Harvey Araton: Union Deja Vu
[The New York Times Business]
November 1, 1998
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
For N.B.A. Union, What Goes Around Comes Around
By HARVEY ARATON
Three years ago, the same pro basketball superstars
who are currently negotiating a luxury tax with
David Stern tried to decertify their union after
learning their representatives were negotiating a
luxury tax with David Stern.
Three years ago, Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing
subverted Simon Gourdine's and Buck Williams'
leadership while contesting the very collective
bargaining agreement they wish they could now preserve.
Now Jordan and Ewing are discovering how much harder it
is to run the government than to stage a revolution.
"It's become obvious now that, except for not raising
the minimum salary more, the 1995 deal was an excellent
one for the players," Williams said from his Greenwich,
Conn., home. "I'm not looking to say, 'I told you so.'
I'm not that kind of person. But it's gratifying to
hear some of them say, 'Let's get back to the status
quo.' "
Mostly, what Williams wants to hear is that the
locked-out players are getting closer to an equitable
deal that would allow him to proceed with the final
season of an 18-year National Basketball Association
career, possibly not with the Knicks.
He roots for an agreement before too many games are
lost and too many players are desperate and Billy
Hunter, a tough, earnest man he admires, finds himself
back on defense, trying to cover his players, not to
mention the owners and Stern, the NBA commissioner.
This would be most unfortunate, said Williams, in a
league that is 80 percent black and more than ever
needs a strong players' advocate, a voice and ego equal
in stature to Stern's.
"Billy was hired because he is competent and
intelligent," Williams said. "He also happens to be
black, and I think, even if you just look at the
history of our own union, black leadership is held to a
higher standard. You see it all the time; blacks don't
believe that another black man can do for them what a
white man can. Race is an issue, a subtext, in this
fight."
Winning the fight is one thing; losing perspective is
another. This is the fine line Hunter walks. Three
years ago, Williams couldn't collect dues, much less
get players like Jordan and Ewing to stop counting
their money and shoot for the union. Now Jordan engages
in shouting matches with owners, and only he knows how
much of this has been inspired by his ubiquitous agent,
David Falk.
"Michael and Patrick didn't care until Falk told them
to get involved," Williams said. "But Billy has done a
great job insulating himself with some really big
megastars."
Hunter won't be immune to what befell Williams,
Gourdine and Charles Grantham before them if this goes
on much longer. The modern pro basketball player has
never ridden fume-filled buses in the minor leagues, or
plugged his way through the frozen tundra of junior
hockey.
He holds poolside news conferences and doesn't
recognize the public-relations folly of holding a
rank-and-file meeting in Las Vegas. Hunter has to play
his cards so that he doesn't put his less-leveraged
players in the cash-strapped position to panic, while
Stern pontificates and the NBA continues to be
perceived as a one-genius league.
It has been this way since Larry Fleisher ran a tight
union ship, in no small part because he doubled as the
agent for the league's activist players. Isiah Thomas
emerged a decade ago to contest this arrangement, and
the union has since been a mix of apathy and anarchy,
which only inspires Falk to, as he says, "roll up his
sleeves" for players at the top end.
"It's all perception," said Williams, remembering how
easy it was for Falk to ridicule the 1995 deal that
drove the players' percentage of the pie from 52
percent to 57 percent. "But the result has always been
all these white attorneys on both sides, and in the
middle you have black players questioning the
intelligence of their black union leaders."
Even after Jordan and Ewing stepped in to block the
first version of the 1995 deal until the luxury tax was
removed, Falk and other agents promoted decertifying
the union, ultimately losing a vote that was more
lopsided than the worst NBA blowout.
When Stern locked the players out last July, everyone
knew the owners hadn't exercised their contractual
right to reopen negotiations over pennies. This union
had all summer to explore what it preached last time --
decertification -- and didn't. Hunter knows his
consensus is less interested in chasing lawyer-driven
dreams in court, more determined to cut a deal and get
paid.
So a milder version of the luxury tax that supposedly
meant Armageddon in 1995 went on the table. Hunter said
on the radio the other day that he has offered to roll
back unrestricted free agency for rookies, following
their first contracts, to right-of-first-refusal free
agency. Owners would get leverage they should have when
dealing with players who demand $100 million for
potential, not production.
"That's a tough one to give back," Williams said.
Again, three years ago, he was hammered by Falk for
simply allowing a rookie wage scale. Ask Kevin Garnett
how that agreement worked out. Ask Alonzo Mourning and
Allan Houston and, of course, Ewing if Buck Williams'
deal was so bad.
As Williams said, this is always about point of view,
about power, about who gets the biggest payday. Billy
Hunter has a chance to alter the perception of who
represents all the players, who drives the NBA with
Stern. Hunter's window of opportunity is now, or maybe
never.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company